The heroes and heroines ofNight Geometry and the Garscadden Trains, A. L. Kennedy's first collection of stories, are small people - the kind who inhabit the silence in libraries, who never appear on screen and who never make the headlines. Often alone and sometimes lonely, her characters ponder the mysteries of sex and death... and the ability of public transport to affect our lives.

A. L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Grantas Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards including the Costa Book of the Year for her novelDay. She lives in London and is a part-time lecturer in creative writing at Warwick University.

'The supremely original writer among a gifted generation of young British fiction talents' - Scotland on Sunday